A Moral Panic? the Problematization of Forced Marriage in British Newspapers
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A Moral Panic? The Problematization of Forced Marriage in British Newspapers Sundari Anitha1 Aisha K. Gill2 1University of Lincoln, UK 2Department of Social Sciences, University of Roehampton, London, UK Sundari Anitha, School of Social and Political Sciences, Faculty of Health and Social Sciences, University of Lincoln, Brayford Pool, Lincoln LN6 7TS, UK. Email: [email protected]; [email protected] Abstract This article examines the British media’s construction of forced marriage (FM) as an urgent social problem in a context where other forms of violence against women are not similarly problematized. A detailed analysis of four British newspapers over a 10-year period demonstrates that media reporting of FM constitutes a moral panic in that it is constructed as a cultural problem that threatens Britain’s social order rather than as a specific form of violence against women. Thus, the current problematization of FM restricts discursive spaces for policy debates and hinders attempts to respond to this problem as part of broader efforts to tackle violence against women. forced marriage immigration policy moral panic problematization violence against women Introduction The specific forms of violence experienced by minority ethnic women had long been neglected both in the academic literature and in policy debates in the United Kingdom that have focused on violence perpetrated by partners and ex-partners. However, over the last decade increasing attention has been directed to the different manifestations of violence against women (VAW). This includes violence perpetrated by (primarily though not exclusively) male relatives from the wider kin group rather than just the immediate family such as so-called honor-based violence, dowry violence, and forced marriage (FM). Understanding the forms of violence experienced by minority ethnic women requires an approach that takes account of the continuities between different forms of gender-based violence while also addressing the specificity of particular forms of violence such as FM. The UK government (HM Government, 2008) defines FM as a marriage in which one or both spouses do not (or in the case of some adults with learning or physical disabilities, cannot) consent to the marriage and duress is involved. Duress can include physical, psychological, financial, sexual and emotional pressure. (p. 10) However, it is important to recognize that consent and coercion are not binaries; the social context within which consent is constructed is crucial to understanding coercive constraints. Consent and coercion can be better conceptualized as two ends of a continuum between which lie degrees of gendered socio-cultural expectations, control, persuasion, pressure, threat, and force (Anitha & Gill, 2009). Unlike with “mainstream” forms of domestic violence, there is no official data on the prevalence of FM across European Union Member States (Rude-Antoine, 2005); there is a similar gap in our knowledge about the extent of FM in Canada, the United States, and Australia. However, FM has garnered significant media attention in recent years in a number of European states, though the American, Australian, and Canadian media have only recently begun to give prominence to stories concerning FM. Meanwhile, media debates in Europe have informed policy initiatives to address this problem; countries including Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, and the United Kingdom have recently created a specific offense associated with forcing someone into marriage rather than strengthen the existing criminal code that is applicable in the case of “mainstream” forms of VAW (Bredal, 2005; Rude-Antoine, 2005; Tzortzis, 2004). This recent upsurge of interest contrasts starkly with the fact that FM and early marriage have been the subject of campaigning by women’s groups for several decades in these and other parts of the world. In Afghanistan, sub-Saharan Africa, Iraq, and rural China, where bride-price traditions lead many poverty-stricken families to “marry off” their daughters at a young age, women’s groups have supported policies and campaigns discouraging early marriage; they have also called for a minimum age for marriage to be established or, where such provisions already exist, for more stringent enforcement of existing laws and policies (Hague & Thiara, 2009). Algeria, Bangladesh, Jordan, Iraq, Malaysia, Morocco, and Turkey are among the countries that have raised the minimum age for marriage to combat FM. In most of these countries, the minimum age is now 18. This article examines the representation of FM in British newspapers to illuminate (a) how this form of VAW is constructed by the media and (b) what sort of policy solutions these constructions both suggest and exclude. The Problematization of FM Foucault’s (1985) concept of problematization directs attention to the ways in which a problem comes to be framed and the implications of this framing for how the “development of a given into a question . transform[s] a group of obstacles and difficulties into problems to which the diverse solutions will attempt to produce a response” (Foucault, 2000, p. 118). By using this concept to “unpack” the construction of FM in British media discourses, the article aims (a) to examine the underlying and often implicit assumptions behind the construction of FM as a “problem” and (b) to understand how this problematization of FM influences policy responses to it. Analyses of media representations of crime and criminal justice policy have drawn attention to the framing processes whereby journalists use notions of selectivity and salience to organize their material in news reports (Entman, 1993; Reese, 2001). Framing determines not only how media content is shaped but also how it is contextualized in terms of the points of reference and latent structures of meaning that underlie the construction of particular media accounts. This simultaneously reflects and influences public perception of the issues at stake (McQuail, 2005). Research indicates that print and television media have accorded disproportionate and increasing attention to crime over the past four decades, focusing especially on individual criminal incidents and their victims, rather than on patterns of crime or possible causal factors (Beckett & Sasson, 2000; Reiner, Livingstone, & Allen, 2003). Benedict (1992) and Shoemaker and Reese (1996) have identified the core socio-political and practical factors that affect the framing of news stories about crimes against women; these include conceptions of “what sells,” journalistic traditions, racism, sexism, class prejudices, sources’ biases, and organizational pressures and constraints. Mirroring press coverage of crime in general, reporting on VAW has increased since the 1980s; however, media representations of VAW and its victims continue to reflect dominant societal attitudes toward women and, thus, serve to perpetuate gender inequalities (Berns, 2004; Meyers, 1997). Media accounts of domestic violence typically exclude the concept of male accountability and focus on victims, who are (a) celebrated for having the courage to leave abusive relationships, (b) accused of instigating their abuse, or (c) held responsible for not escaping their predicament (Berns, 2004). Berns (2004) warns that although some of these frames have helped to foster support for victims through the development of legislation and the funding of shelters, they have not helped to “develop public understanding of the social context of violence and may impede social change that could prevent violence” (p. 3). The crucial role of the media as an agent of moral indignation has been explored through the sociological concept of moral panic, which was developed in the 1970s by Young (1971), Cohen (1972), Cohen and Young (1973), and Hall (1978) to explain the processes involved in creating concern about a social problem that is disproportionate to the reality of the problem; this, in turn, serves to create a discursive space aimed at encouraging a shift in legal and social codes. The concern generated in a moral panic revolves around the identification of a specific threat that has the potential to destroy important social values, norms, and regulations. The identification of such a threat often catalyzes “a demand for greater social regulation or control and a demand for a return to ‘traditional’ values” (Thompson, 1998, pp. 8-9). Thompson (1998) notes that “in complex modern societies [a moral panic] seldom develops as a straightforward upsurge of indignation . there is a ‘politics of social problems’ or to put it another way, they are ‘socially constructed’” (p. 12); hence, moral panic reflects, and often reinforces, prevailing power relations. In Cohen’s (1972) early conceptualization, the collective action that a moral panic triggers is marked by “mass hysteria, delusion and panics” (p. 11) that serve to focus public anxieties and fears on a specific category of deviants identified as “folk devils” (Cohen, 1972). Thus, the key ingredient in the emergence of a moral panic is the creation or intensification of hostility toward a particular group, category, or cast of characters. The “discovery” of the group seen as threatening or harmful to the sanctity of society as a whole is accompanied by a simultaneous oppositional repositioning of the rest of society as defenders of the society’s moral values. Thus, Rohloff (2008) points to the importance of changes in relative power ratios between groups not only as key to understanding the broader context